Snake People (1968)

Posted on Oct 19, 2005 under Horror |

aka Isle of the Snake People, aka Cult of the Dead

Directed by “Jhon” (Juan) Ibanez with Jack Hill
Written by Jack Hill
Starring
- Boris Karloff
- Julissa
- “Charles” (Carlos) East
- “Ralph) (Rafael) Bertrand
- “Tongolele” (Yolanda Montes)

Look, everyone needs money. I need it. You need it. (No, not you specifically, Mr. Gates, I was referring to everyone else reading the site.) And even aging actors whose names and faces have become a part of pop culture need it.

Which is why Boris Karloff, very near the end of his days, appeared in a string of cheap Mexican horror movies. Karloff wasn’t well enough to travel; he was barely healthy enough to stand with the help of a cane. Not to worry; director-producer Juan Ibanez engineered the scripts so that some few scenes could be shot in LA where Karloff lived by writer-director Jack Hill, and the rest could be filmed in Mexico, occasionally using a stand-in for Karloff’s character. The similarity here between these movies and Bela Lugosi’s last feature, in which his untimely death forced the use of a stand-in, is uncanny.

The finished product in this case is not nearly as amusing as Lugosi’s swan song. Aside from some moments of idiosyncrastic appeal, it’s largely a muddled mess of unappealing characters and meandering plot points.

I’ve found MY favorite character!

After Narrator Boy introduces us to some basic voodoo concepts such as the deitical Baron Samedi, whose worship is led by a priest known as “Damballah”, we then get the high point of the movie. No, really. The best scene comes first, as a gringo in the kind of white suit that gringos always wear in the tropics is led through a bone-strewn graveyard at night by — a cackling bald dwarf in sunglasses and a top hat (Santanon)! Seriously, there are few movies that could top an opening like that. It’s forever until we find out more about the gringo, so I just call him “Mr. Moustache,” and the dwarf… do we ever learn his name? [checks notes] If we do, I didn’t write it down, but I think simply “the dwarf” identifies him well enough.

They’re in the graveyard for voodooish reasons, obviously; the dwarf’s got a pin-filled doll and a live chicken with its legs tied. Between the two of them, they dig up a recent coffin, while the dwarf cackles at random; then, once the casket is exposed, the dwarf beheads the chicken (Attention: Some animals were harmed during the making of this motion picture, but the crew ate the chicken later for lunch, so it’s all good) and sprinkles the blood on the coffin lid. Mr. Moustache opens it up to reveal a recently deceased native girl, who turns out not to be as deceased as all that. Mr. Moustache immediately starts showering her with affection.

Pretty good, huh? Yeah, it’s all downhill once the actors start speaking lines.

On the other hand, at least characters get names that way. Thus we meet Lt. Labesch (Ralph Bertrand), a fastidious, authoritarian police officer who’s some to this isolated French-administered Pacific island of Korbai to whip the local gendarmerie into shape. His fellow traveler, headed the same direction and thus under his protection, is Annabella Vandenberg (Julissa), a young idealist whose crusade is to rid the world of the evils of alcohol, and could think of no better place to set to work than on a sparsely-populated (but huge) island, at the even-more isolated plantation of her rarely-seen uncle, Carl Von Mulder. Labesch, whatever his other faults, proves himself to be a gallant gentlemen by not mentioning once that Annabella’s hat is one of the most hideous objects ever exposed to the view of mankind.

Excuse me, but something’s EATING YOUR HEAD!!

Labesch is of course outraged at the laxity of the local police department, under the command of young slacker Captain Wilhelm (Charles East). As penance, Labesch makes Wilhelm accompany him, Annabella, and her hat to her uncle’s plantation. En route, they pass a voodoo funeral procession, which Wilhelm helpfully explains for Annabella’s benefit, since she’s never heard the words “voodoo” or “zombie” before. Once his explanation is done, Narrator Boy jumps in (it’s his last appearance, so he has to make it count) with footage of a night-time voodoo ceremony, presided over by a snake-handling bellydancer with severe eyebrows (Tongolele).

Once to Annabella’s uncle’s plantation, we discover that her Uncle Carl is none other than Boris Karloff, who thinks that Labesch’s plans to impose order on the lackadaisical native ways are misguided at least. He also demonstrates the phenomenal mental powers he’s been developing out here in the hinterlands by concentrating on a mirror and making it move a fraction of an inch. As with most people who discover a hidden cosmic power, he’s giddy with the idea that it can lead to a world with no war or hunger, though he leaves the steps up to that grand goal rather vague. He also introduces, mostly for our benefit, his household companion Kalea, who is none other than the snakedancer. Oh, and she can start things on fire with her mind. A useful talent.

“Still better than that one gig in Tijuana…”

From here, um…. Well, from here the movie dissolves into a bunch of loose plot threads and unrelated scenes. Labesch organizes the police to make raids on midnight voodoo rituals; Mr. Moustache dances with his pliable but unenthusiastic zombie bride; Wilhelm courts Annabella so clumsily that you have to wonder how she could not be drunk and still listen to him; and the dwarf runs around and cackles at various junctures, usually while Kalea is gyrating and snakehandling.

Oh, and we get what are supposed to be mysterious glimpses of Damballah himself, a tall fellow — very tall — who wears a black hood top hat whenever he appears, carrying a staff topped with a human skull. Did I mention he was tall? I certainly hope the final-reel revelation that Von Mulder is Damballah wasn’t supposed to be a surprise to anyone, even though Karloff’s stand-in for those scenes has a gait nothing like Karloff’s own.

Beakers? Of colored liquids? But that must mean — there’s SCIENCE going on here!

Along the way, Annabella gets tagged as a future human sacrifice, so the centerpiece is a drugged dream sequence in which Kalea demonstrates that the sexual subtext of her snake dancing is pretty mild, compared to the imagery she puts in poor Annabella’s head: snakes crawling up between her thighs and into her mouth, and a lengthy kiss between herself and a thigh-groping mirror-duplicate of herself. I don’t know exactly what the dream was meant to accomplish, but it gave me the vapors.

Eventually, what little bit of plot there is comes together when Mr. Moustache is finally revealed as Klinsor (Quintin Bulnes), Von Mulder’s foreman, who’s been taking liberties with the zombies (not sure what rights one would assign to reanimated dead girls, but according to Kalea, Von Molder doesn’t approve of piffling with the dead). Upset at having his main squeeze immolated in front of his eyes, Klinsor runs to Labesch and informs on the coming midnight ritual in which there’s to be a human sacrifice to summon Baron Samedi. The entire police force has deserted by this point (all three or four of them), so it’s up to Labesch and Wilhelm to infiltrate and stop the ritual before Karloff’s dastardly stand-in can sacrifice Annabella.

Oh. My. Word.

And frankly, I couldn’t bring myself to care, as there’s not a single character worth caring about. Annabella comes to the island full of crusader fervor, only to spend her time sitting around her uncle’s plantation, waiting to be hit on or sacrificed. Labesch stomps around all starched and furious, ending up on the side of good largely because his opposition is a bunch of zombie-creating voodoo-worshippers. Wilhelm is a professional slacker, moved upon to button up his uniform shirt only when he’s trying to put the moves on Annabella. Von Mulder accidentally comes across as sympathetic as anyone, with Karloff in grandfatherly mode here rather than seeming like any kind of menace. I’m almost ready to declare the dwarf the true protagonist, if only because he’s the only one who held my attention. Well, him and Kalea’s gyrating midsection.